


The Last Mercy of Malcolm Donne

by myystic (neoinean)



Category: Firefly, Highlander: The Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Backstory, Community: hlh_shortcuts, Cowboys & Cowgirls, Gen, IN SPACE!, Western
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-25 12:28:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/638912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neoinean/pseuds/myystic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shadow has its own folk songs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last Mercy of Malcolm Donne

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Carenejeans](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carenejeans/gifts).



> Pre-series for _Firefly_ , post-series for _Highlander_.

_Shadow, Canyon Run_  
_The Year of Our Lord 2486_  
_(25 years before the Battle of Serenity Valley)_

They buried Loren just before snowfall.

It wasn't quite an accident, as such, more down to stupid chance and plain bad luck, but still it sat ill with him, all the same. Loren's death complicated things. Not that Duncan still wouldn't have left, because by then there'd been no choice, but leaving Elsie at the same time her damned fool husband died... He hadn't wanted to go, not yet, and especially not then, but time and circumstance had forced his hand.

Because Duncan had died, too.

The Dark of Shadow, they called it: whatever quirk of terraforming made the upper atmosphere so wretchedly unstable that monsoon season kept no clock but its own, and not even the best core-trained meteorologists could predict it. Settlements tended to lose folk in twos and threes each time the Dark of Shadow came to town, but theirs were the first losses for Canyon Run that year, breaking an eleven-month streak for the entire district. Damned shame, that was, or so the townsfolk said. So far from the technological protection of her cities, the people who'd settled Shadow's outlands were a practiced hand at tragedy. They were as inured to it now as old-time fishing towns once had been to losses on the sea.

Duncan had been down in the Chase that time, when the Dark of Shadow came calling. Him, five hands, and Loren, all riding out to the winter pasture to find out why the watch was late. (Turned poacher and ran, it turned out, but no one would know until after.) And it should have been snow, a storm coming so late in the season, but by some funny little freak of the winds the air was just southerly enough the Dark of Shadow came roaring in with howling winds and driving rain. The Witch of November, they called it, unironically: the gentle southern breeze that could turn deadly in an instant. No matter that the verse had long since forgotten why. Now only the immortals remembered.

Of course, Shadow had plenty folk songs of its own. Wasn't a native son still living who didn't know all the words to _The Last Mercy of Malcolm Donne_.

But on that fateful day in late November the Dark of Shadow blew in fast and cruel, with barely time enough for anyone caught out in it to notice the sudden drop in air pressure before the clouds rolled over and the skies opened up and the rain screamed down in wind-swept torrents. Most of Red Rock Canyon was wide and easy-sloped, but it narrowed into a funnel when it plunged into the Chase and even the lightest rain on the hard-pack could be enough to kick off a flash flood. The storm that hit though was no light rain, and their scouting party had been caught out too far down to have any hope of outracing the wall of water that swept through the Chase like the hand of God.

They were trapped, and Loren was useless the way all businessmen were useless, but Duncan knew the Chase like he knew the back of his hand and he knew how to give orders such that even princes would obey (his Bonnie Prince had listened, anyway, way, way, way back when) and if they could get to Elam's Notch then he knew they'd have a chance. And not even Loren Reynolds, contrary bastard that he sometimes was, knew better than to argue. Not even for the cost of losing all their fancy camping gear, which truth be told the ranch could ill afford to eat right then, but the horses couldn't afford the extra weight on their backs if they wanted any hope at all of bearing their riders to safety.

Duncan was Loren's foreman. He knew down to the last dime just how much this would hurt them, but the only irrecoverable loss was to the Reaper and he'd had more than enough practice spitting in that bastard's face over the centuries that he was certain, if they could only reach the Notch, then they'd stand a very good chance of making it out of the canyon alive.

It was a death race, seven horses against the tsunami nipping at their heels, the rain pelting down in sheets, ice cold and hard enough to sting. He could barely see to the nose of his own horse, but then again he _knew_ the Chase, knew it backwards, forwards, and upwards, too, and he led them all to Elam's Notch like it was as simple as leading them around to the Jessick's after supper for a beer.

Mickey overtook him at the final few lengths - he was lighter, had a faster horse - but Mickey was a local boy, grew up around these parts, probably knew the Chase just as well as Duncan did, and he found the Notch just as surely as a compass finding north. Duncan though was taller, and broader, and he had to give Mickey a boost up to the lowest foothold, but that was all Mickey needed. Once he found his purchase he climbed like he knew his life depended on it, and when Duncan threw up his lariat Mickey wound it about his waist and thighs like a climbing hitch, and dug his heels into the unforgiving rock.

Rafferty came next and with Cullen right on his heels. Between Duncan's arms and Mickey's lariat work they both were able to scramble up the cliff-side pretty much together, side by side and half on top of each other as blind panic sent them struggling for the quickest path no matter who or what stood in their way. They made it though, that was the important thing, and then they added their weight to bracing Mickey's anchor hold, which was good because Jaime came along next and he wasn't as nearly as spry as he looked, not with the way his bad leg took to storms of any kind. It took all three men hauling from above, plus Duncan boosting from below, to get the man up high enough for any chance at safety.

The first ledge of the Notch was small and narrow, and already there were too many man clinging to it to be truly safe, either from accidentally elbowing each other off or from collapsing the entire lower Notch in a landslide on account of their weight. Duncan had to shout to be heard, but he ordered Mickey to leave the lariat to the others and make for the second tier. The rain made it treacherous though, and he slipped a lot. It took the others boosting him before he was able to get even halfway there, but by the time Cote reached them Mickey was up enough the ledge had space for just one more. Cote was wiry-like, taller than Mickey but beanpole thin, and he scrambled up the lariat like a monkey and into Mickey's place.

Last came Loren, worst rider of the lot and the slowest to start, on top of that, because arguments or no he was still prone to hesitating whenever it was any other than his own mouth giving orders. He reached them just as the water crested high enough it became sickeningly obvious that not even Elam Notch's was going to be tall enough to save them, and Duncan barely had time to reach out, grab a fist full of Loren's belt, wrap his other arm up in the lariat - and pray that he'd misjudged the distance.

He should have known better, though; and really, he did. God hasn't had anything to say to Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod in more years than the verse can count.

Mickey was safe, clinging as he was to the lip of the second tier, and Cote and Rafferty had good holds on the rope, but the tidal wave swept through faster than a mule could fly and ten thousand times as strong. It washed Jaime and Cullen straight off the ledge, swatted them down into the deluge like man might swat a fly, and it happened so fast they probably hadn't even had time enough to scream. Not that anyone could have heard them over the roar of floodwaters, anyway.

Both Duncan's shoulders popped, and the arm wrapped in the lariat was sliced to ribbons by the shear, but when he finally drowned he kept his death-grip on Loren's belt, and despite its best efforts the flood hadn't been able to throw anything at them strong enough to snap the lariat. It still hung right where Mickey left it.

That's where the search party found Loren's body, days later. Duncan had to pull the end out of his own flesh, and he wrapped it tight around Loren's torso. The men on the ledge though knew Duncan had been the first one on the line, and they figured he must have had time enough to tether Loren before he himself got swept away. A hero's death it would have been, had Loren lived. There was a particular tragedy in that.

Methos had found it quite funny.

They never found his body, of course, because Duncan walked the long way out of the canyon and made it to the shed behind Methos' surgery before sunup the very next day, before anyone had even started looking. That was well, though, because they never found poor Jaime or Cullen, either; probably got themselves washed all the way down to the marsh and had their bones picked clean by scavengers long before any search party would have caught up with them, and so too it was said of Duncan's fate. Not a bad death for an immortal looking to move on.

Too bad he really rather hadn't been - he'd _liked_ his life on Shadow, damn it - but there'd been absolutely nothing for it. He'd known that as soon as he'd revived and saw just how bad the flood had been. There was no honest way a man could have survived it.

It had been a terrible blow to Reynolds' Ranch, losing two good hands, the foreman and the master, three horses and seven men's worth of gear. If there had been any other way Duncan would never have left them to it. Elsie had a good head on her shoulders, true, but she knew precious little of ranching, neither practical nor business, and her with a baby on the way. No, if he'd had any choice at all he wouldn't have left them like this.

He wouldn't have left them at all.

It had been a good life, if brief. One of his best in recent centuries, certainly his favorite since he left the gathering behind on earth-that-was for the fool's hope of peace among the stars. He'd miss Shadow, and Elsie Reynolds, and Canyon Run, and ranching, but there was an entire verse out there, certainly big enough to get lost in for a while. At least until he felt like finding himself again. Maybe the watchers would let him go back to his real name again. It'd certainly been long enough.

In the end three stone markers were placed over unturned earth in the communal plot for Canyon Run. The weather had turned with the storm and the ground was frozen over; no sense in digging holes to bury empty coffins. Loren though, or what was left of him, they planted next to his parents and his sister, just before the first snowfall of the season, the last mercy he could give the woman that perhaps he'd grown just a bit too fond of.

Duncan caught a glimpse of the small, sad ceremony through the window of Methos' aircar on the way to the shipyards at Nova, heard the four loud, lonely peels of the chapel bell as it rang in mourning for the dead. He knew that four new names had just been burnt-etched into the wall behind the pulpit, the honor roll for Canyon Run, just the latest in the list of souls the Dark of Shadow had claimed for its own.

The last four names of 2486 read: Jaime Stone, Cullen Lovelace, Loren Reynolds, and Malcolm Donne.

 

~ _Fin_ ~


End file.
